West Park Healthcare Centre, Toronto: Photo Tour
Laura Peters/CannonDesign
West Park Healthcare Centre: The light-filled and open lobby provides visitors with multiple places to orient themselves, including maps, a digital wayfinding kiosk, and an informational desk at wheelchair height.
Laura Peters/CannonDesign
West Park Healthcare Centre: All corridors in the facility are wide to accommodate wheelchairs and mobility devices of varying sizes. Each wing has an assigned color and nature motif drawn from native surroundings to ease wayfinding for patients and visitors.
Laura Peters/CannonDesign
West Park Healthcare Centre: Inpatient windows are designed to be operable, allowing for natural ventilation without causing a direct breeze on patients, and are positioned to offer scenic views of the surrounding natural environment.
Laura Peters/CannonDesign
West Park Healthcare Centre: The new West Park offers treatment and rehabilitation options for a variety of illnesses and injuries such as lung diseases, stroke, amputation, and acquired brain injuries. Large rehabilitation gyms are located throughout the facility in the inpatient and outpatient wings.
Laura Peters/CannonDesign
West Park Healthcare Centre: Seating alcoves are placed in hallways on the inpatient floors as well as the parking garage and outdoor spaces, allowing time for rest and conversation when patients are outside of their rooms.
Laura Peters/CannonDesign
West Park Healthcare Centre: The new building seeks to pay tribute to the center’s history by blending the indoors and outdoors with the use of materials that harken back to nature, as well as plentiful light. Wood-like soffits are used throughout the interstitial spaces and are intended to mimic the appearance of a tree canopy.
West Park Healthcare Centre, Toronto
West Park Healthcare Centre was founded as a tuberculosis sanitarium in 1904 on a 27-acre campus with the outdoors as its main therapeutic treatment. The facility’s foundational services include tuberculosis and respiratory care and treatment for long-term ventilated patients and those with complex respiratory needs.
Over the years, West Park’s expertise also expanded to provide specialized rehabilitative and complex care for amputation, stroke, acquired brain, and traumatic musculoskeletal injuries.
A new replacement facility centralizes rehabilitation care previously scattered across three buildings while staying on the lush campus in the west end of Toronto.
Creating a restorative setting for rehabilitation
Guided by an overarching design objective to amplify the “park” in West Park, the facility prioritizes connections between the outdoors and indoors via bringing natural light into the building and prioritizing scenic views of the community, adjacent Humber River, and nearby green spaces.
Recognizing that nature improves health outcomes, particularly for those with limited mobility or using mobility assistance devices, the hospital is designed to ensure patients feel connected to the world around them, including large windows in the patient rooms that provide views to the outdoors.
Additionally, the project includes access to the outdoors with terraces on every floor and nature motifs such as forests, rivers, and native flora featured in the interior design.
Utilizing color theory to deliver supportive care environments
For the interior design, the project team utilized color theory alongside imagery of the surrounding Humber River Valley in the graphics palette.
The color palettes, including earthy greens, calming blues, warm wood tones, and neutral shades, and imagery are used on a macro scale, such as in the floor-to-ceiling graphics, and a micro scale, including artwork and lighting choices, depending on the size of the space.
Flexible care environment
Key design strategies incorporated into the building are flexibility, adaptability, and accessibility.
Many patient rooms can be converted for alternate care such as respiratory or other medical support and can have equipment added depending on evolving mobility needs.
Pathways in common area hallways are easily accessible whether walking or using a wheelchair or other assistive device.
West Park Healthcare Centre project details
Location: Toronto
Substantial completion: April 2024; final completion: 2025
Owner: University Health Network
Total building area: 730,000 sq. ft.
Total construction cost: Not disclosed
Cost/sq. ft.: Not disclosed
Architect: CannonDesign, Montgomery Sisam Architects
Interior designer: CannonDesign, Montgomery Sisam Architects
General contractor: EllisDon
Engineers: The Mitchel Partnership (mechanical), Mulvey and Banani International Inc. (electrical), Entuitive (structural)
Builder: Ellis Don
Art consultant: West Park consultant Anne Carlyle
Medical equipment planner: Ellis Don
Carpet/flooring: Interface/Mondo/Terroxy Resin Systems/
Ceiling/wall systems: Rockfon /Armstrong/ USG Mars/ Ecophon/ Carnegie Xorei/ EOMAC / Renolit
Furniture—seating/casegoods: Global
Handrails/wall guards: Acrovyn/ Steel City Millwork
Headwalls/booms: Amico
Signage/wayfinding: GAS Design
Wallcoverings: Koroseal/Acrovyn / Level Digital Wallcovering /Corian
Project details are provided by the design team and not vetted by Healthcare Design.
